Kenneth Folk teaches Buddhist meditation and nondual awakening, and hosts an online dharma forum at kennethfolk.com. Kenneth began practicing Theravada Buddhist meditation while working as a professional musician in 1980, and later completed extensive long term meditation retreats in Asia and the U.S. under the tutelage of Burmese masters Sayadaw U Kundala and Sayadaw U Pandita, and American meditation master Bill Hamilton, among others. Kenneth Folk is one of the few spiritual teachers willing and able to speak openly about enlightenment from both the gradual and suddenpoints of view. His "3 Speed Transmission" method of teaching combines the most pragmatic aspects of Theravada Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta in a way that is easy for modern practitioners to understand and apply. Kenneth's goal is to help others find the happiness that is not dependent upon conditions.

What would I say if I had just five minutes to give comprehensive instructions for awakening?

You are unenlightened to the extent that you are embedded in your experience. You think that your experience is you. You must dis-embed. Do that by taking each aspect of experience as object (looking at it and recognizing it) in a systematic way. Then, surrender entirely.

Do these practices, exactly as written:

First Gear:

1) Objectify body sensations. If you can name them, you aren't embedded there. Notice sensations and note to yourself: "Pressure, tightness, tension, release, coolness, warmth, softness, hardness, tingling, itching, burning, stinging, pulsing, throbbing." If I am looking at something it is not "I".

2) Objectify feeling-tone. Are sensations pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral? If you can sit there for five minutes and note pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral every few seconds, you are not embedded at that layer of mind.

3)Objectify mind states. Investigation, curiosity, happiness, anxiety, amusement, sadness, joy, anger, frustration, annoyance, irritation, aversion, desire, disgust, fear, worry, calm, embarrassment, shame, self-pity, compassion, love, contentment, aversion, dullness, sleepiness, bliss, exhilaration, triumph, self-loathing. Name them and be free of them. They will not cease to arise. They will never cease to arise; but they are not "you;" we know that because if there is a "you" it is the one who is looking, not what is being looked at.

4)Objectify thoughts. Categorize them: planning thought, anticipating thought, worrying thought, imaging thought, remembering thought, rehearsing thought, scenario spinning thought, fantasy thought, self-recrimination thought. Come up with your own vocabulary and see your thoughts as though they belong to someone else. The content is not relevant except to the extent that it helps you to label and therefore objectify them.

(If you master the practices up to this point, you will be an arahat. Nothing further is required for the arahat attainment.)

Second Gear:

5) Objectify the subject. Who am "I"? Turn the light of attention back on itself. Dwell as the impersonal anddisinterested witnessing consciousness.

6) Objectify the subtle, non-local sense of knowing that arises along with each thing that is known. If this knowing is itself known, it is not "I". To notice this subtle level of being is sat-chit-ananda (being-consciousness-bliss).

Third Gear:

7) Surrender entirely. There is Awareness, even when you are no longer present.

May you awaken now. (If it takes you twenty years it will have been worth every minute.)

New-ageyness wearing a sort of (Tibetan) Buddhist-looking hat. Or to put it another way, another Ingram, but with more Dzogchen thrown in. To put it a third way, a guy who might have some insight, but has gone off somewhere weird in the meantime for some reason. I bet maybe after rationalizing that they're enlightened.

Just my impression. My crap detector (that's one of the sense doors, right?) seems to go off fairly often, regarding this stuff.

tiltbillings wrote:"Non-dual" awakening is a bit of big question mark. And taking the "the best of Theravada and Advaita Vedanta" is a non-starter.

"Non-dual" awakening is more than a question mark. It's a red flag that the person is not paying enough attention to what's happening and is settling for a "pie in the sky" finish. I almost got caught in the same trap, which is why I know. Lack of proper discernment of the Dhamma going on there.

As far as the rest is concerned, tilt did say "Advaita Vedanta," didn't he? Vedanta? How does that relate to Buddhism? Short answer: it doesn't. It's a form of Hinduism. And Hinduism ain't Buddhism. Period. No matter how you want to ice that cake.

tiltbillings wrote:"Non-dual" awakening is a bit of big question mark. And taking the "the best of Theravada and Advaita Vedanta" is a non-starter.

"Non-dual" awakening is more than a question mark. It's a red flag that the person is not paying enough attention to what's happening and is settling for a "pie in the sky" finish.

It really is one of the traps of jhana/samadhi to get sucked into a "non-dual" state, thinking that one has arrived.

Even in the world of Hindudharma " Advaita Vedanta " is one small school that has had an impact on the west out of all proportion to its place within Indian thought..largely because it is accessable to those who want a reductionist " religion".I have written elsewhere of the huge anticlimax I experienced when I visited the ashram of Ramana Maharishi in South India..It was the locals on the make, and who can blame them ? And dazed and lost looking westerners asking themselves " Who am I "...

tiltbillings wrote:"Non-dual" awakening is a bit of big question mark. And taking the "the best of Theravada and Advaita Vedanta" is a non-starter.

"Non-dual" awakening is more than a question mark. It's a red flag that the person is not paying enough attention to what's happening and is settling for a "pie in the sky" finish.

It really is one of the traps of jhana/samadhi to get sucked into a "non-dual" state, thinking that one has arrived.

Absolutely, Tilt! This can happen to not only jhana/samadhi practitioners. Just about anyone can become caught up in this delusion at anytime during their practice. It's one of the biggest red herrings that face serious Dhamma practitioners.

For an antidote to this malady, see Bhikkhu Bodhi's essay Dhamma and Non-duality. This essay literally stopped me in my tracks. I dropped, like a hot potato, all the non-dualist literature I was reading at the time and returned to reading the suttas. It helped me to see the delusion I was about to buy into. It also proved to be a watershed in my practice, as I dropped all other literature (about Buddhism) but the discourses. Everything you need to know about awakening is contained in the discourses, if you're able to pay attention, be diligent in your efforts, and get (meaning understand) what is being communicated.

Don't let these kinds of ideas espoused by the Non-Dualists trick you into thinking that you've arrived.

PeterB wrote:Even in the world of Hindudharma " Advaita Vedanta " is one small school that has had an impact on the west out of all proportion to its place within Indian thought..largely because it is accessable to those who want a reductionist " religion".

I'd beg to differ, Peter. Right from Shankara, Advaita Vedanta has played a big part in reviving "Hindu" philosophy,spirituality and religion. Modern seers like Swami Vivekananda and Ramakrishna Paramhansa, proponents of AV, have sculpted the higher strata of Indian thought. Of course, nowadays it remains inaccessible and too esoteric for the blind, religious masses. I find it unfortunate that philosophies dabbling with duality (dvaita) have overcome the influence of AV leading to blind faith and superstition.

Interestingly, the same phenomenon has occurred, although to a lesser extent from what I can see, in Vibhajjavada countries like Burma, Sri Lanka and Thailand.

I'm sorry if I caused a confusion, I didn't mean to imply that dvaita philosophies have spread in these countries. From what I gather, there is a lot of superstition and blind faith prevalent in these countries, this is what I meant. So even if dvaita had not taken root in India, there would in all probability still be superstition and blind faith.

Dhammabodhi wrote:I'm sorry if I caused a confusion, I didn't mean to imply that dvaita philosophies have spread in these countries. From what I gather, there is a lot of superstition and blind faith prevalent in these countries, this is what I meant. So even if dvaita had not taken root in India, there would in all probability still be superstition and blind faith.

there is a lot of superstition and blind faith prevalent in these countries That is the nature of religion in general.

Also, I do not see the Pali suttas as being dualistic, and I certainly do not see non-dualism being much more than dualism.

This being is bound to samsara, kamma is his means for going beyond.SN I, 38.

Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireas na daoine.People live in one another’s shelter.